


A Waiting Room Life Interrupted

by mebfeath



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s07e03 Fragile Balance, F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Season/Series 07, mini!otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 22:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3095243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mebfeath/pseuds/mebfeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The blue eyes appear out of nowhere. One minute he’s glancing absent-mindedly around the stands at the scattering of people, mostly girlfriends and waiting parents, and the next his eyes are fixed and his heart’s in his throat. He blinks the first time, assuming he's imagining things. Memories of a life he didn't live returning to haunt him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Waiting Room Life Interrupted

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the lovely bethanyactually. I take credit for all mistakes.

Thor's eyes narrowed as he studied the human in front of him.

'A favour?' he repeated.

'Yes. Well – not for me,' she added quickly. Even in Thor's limited interactions with humans, he could tell she was nervous. Her eyes were wide, her breathing more rapid than normal, and she spoke quickly. 'It's for Colonel O'Neill.'

She cocked her head to the side slightly. 'Well, sort of.'

 

 

Brand new blue eyes blinked, but their perception was anything but new.

_Clear glass, silver and grey walls. A console, with a small grey being behind it. The clear glass retracts, revealing cold air._

'Hello,' a small, clear voice greeted from in front of her.

'Thor?' The blue eyes blinked again. 'What am I doing here?'

Thor’s grey head tilted slightly as he studied the woman in front of him.

'You are here as a favour.'

 

 

He's okay. Playing hockey, revelling in knees that haven't seen forty-odd years and two and half wars.  Dealing with the inane babble that makes up 99% of the noise around him. Occasionally he feels himself being drawn into that world; occasionally he resists. _You’re a teenager_ , he reminds himself eventually, once the idea loses some of its repugnancy. Y _ou may as well enjoy it_.

Time passes slowly and quickly. Some nights he’s sitting on his couch ignoring the television, and the loneliness threatens to overwhelm him. It takes all his training and then some to tamp down the panic that floods into his consciousness. It’s a panic that he can ignore if he keeps himself busy.

So he throws himself into school life. Hockey, basketball. Classes. Finding that he vaguely remembered some of the stuff he’d studied before, that it didn’t take much to dredge up familiar equations and theories from the memories long thought lost in the chaos of a life lived.

He revelled in walking the line – the line that kept his options open, but closed enough that the radar slipped unblinkingly over his head.

 

 

‘I’m a _favour_?’

Her even gaze didn’t waver. ‘I think you know you’re a lot more than that.’

Her counterpart didn’t reply.

She dropped her eyes. ‘He’s…well, he’s not coping overly well,’ she explained quietly.

Her counterpart let out a soft sigh, her features softening slightly.

‘I guess it always was a choice.’

 

 

The blue eyes appear out of nowhere. One minute he’s glancing absent-mindedly around the stands at the scattering of people, mostly girlfriends and waiting parents, and the next his eyes are fixed and his heart’s in his throat.

He blinks the first time, assuming he's imagining things. Memories of a life he didn't live returning to haunt him.

They’re gone.

He’s at hockey practice and he chalks it up to one too many knocks to the head.

He throws himself into the scrimmage and gets penalty boxed by his own coach less than a minute in.

 

 

Second time around, he chases them.

He sees them over a set of textbooks; they blink at him once before they’re lost in the sea of teenage heads floating around. His feet propel him forward to the edge of the building before he knows what is happening, his eyes searching without seeing.

He stops as he rounds the corner, breathing hard. There’s no one there save for a few brown-haired sophomores lying on the grass.

He flips around, searching the dwindling post-school crowds for those eyes, the blonde hair, _anything_ to tell him he’s not going mad, that he isn’t slowly losing his mind as he wiles away his life in this waiting room called high school.

He deliberately slows his heart rate (thank God for special ops training) and runs a hand through his hair (some things would never change, he knew, and he was ok with that).

He was losing it. Slowly, but surely.

But, he reasons sardonically, in this messed-up, waiting-room life he was living, who knew what reality really looked like anyway?

 

 

Third time around he knows it’s her.

He doesn’t know how, but he _knows_.

He knows he’s going insane.

It’s late, and he’s walking to his car after basketball practice, his sweatshirt doing little against the icy November-afternoon air. He looks up blankly, mentally taking stock of the contents of his fridge (pizza, more pizza, cheese, bread, apple juice) when he sees her.

To be fair, her movement caught his eye.

The blue eyes stare back at him, the low light making them darker than usual. He knows those eyes; he’d recognise them anywhere. They’d been burned into his subconscious at exactly the same time he’d almost decided that maybe, just maybe, his life was worth living again.

He freezes, mouth open, the sound of his heartbeat growing increasingly loud as it fights to force breath in and out of his lungs.

_Don’t blink._

‘O’Neill!’ calls a voice from his left, shattering the moment.

He blinks. She’s gone.

 _Dammit_ , he mutters as he drops his bag and keys and everything and sprints towards the parking lot, in the direction of the eyes, the desperation tightening a noose around his neck and a band around his chest.

‘Hey!’ he cries frantically into the evening. A few stunned students turn to face him, but his eyes search past them, the desperation increasing as they fail to find their target.

She’s gone. Again.

 _I am not going insane,_ he tells himself as he runs a hand through his hair and focuses on breathing. _Not insane._

He walks slowly back to his car, blind-sided by the past. His heart explodes with the hope he'd long quelled, long squashed down into the little box of _things I can’t afford to think of again_. He'd almost forgotten her, he'd told himself. A pair of blue eyes framed by blonde hair and wide smile that his mind cruelly seizes on before he can remind himself that she isn’t here. You don't forget Samantha Carter; you just give your heart a break until something jumps out and reminds you that she exists on a level completely and utterly out of your reach.  But hopefully, he tells himself in a charitable moment, not out of _his_.

He'd been good. He’d kept his head down, hadn't made contact. Hadn't done a thing to arouse suspicion. He'd allowed himself one element of fun: Physics class. And he’d put all of his energy into questioning his teacher only just far enough to make her squint at him before he'd play dumb and feign ignorance. His uncle was a physics teacher once, he'd shrug. He'd listened.

He told himself she’d laugh at him. Each and every quip is for her as if she’s still sitting by his side, hiding her smile while mentally rolling her eyes at him. It’s the only thing that keeps him sane, those little voyages into imagination, where he’s back in the briefing room or in the commissary or off-world or anywhere where he was Colonel Jack O’Neill USAF, leader of SG-1 and hopelessly in love with his 2IC.

The second he walks out the Physics classroom door, the charade ends and he puts her back in her box in his mind, where Teal’c and Daniel reside too. It’s the only thing that keeps him sane.

He pounds the back of his car as he walks by, the pain in his hand momentarily blinding him, a vain attempt to distract him from the pain in his chest that was slowly ebbing away.

She had to stay in the box. They all did.

 

 

Fourth time, he catches her.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and he’s walking through the park across the road. The trees remind him of planets he never officially travelled to, but there’s very little left on Earth that doesn’t remind him of the life he never officially lived, and the pain is slowly dulling with the memories – something he’s not sure he’s entirely happy or unhappy about. He looks up and there she is, standing behind a group of kids gathered around the entrance to the local Boy Scout Association building.

She’s smiling and it hits him like a truck; a small, localised truck aiming directly at his chest.

He changes direction slightly, walking slowly towards her. He figures she’s maybe 150 feet away - if he walks slowly and if she doesn’t look his way and if the planets align in his favour, he might just get within reach before she disappears again and he commits himself to the nearest asylum.

She doesn’t see him at first - she’s laughing at one of the small girls standing in front of her – but then she looks up and his breath is whisked from his lungs in one fell swoop.

Her eyes widen in realisation and he starts running. He watches as she leans down to speak to the little girl before slowly turning and walking quickly away and around the corner of the building.

He realises later that if he was wrong – he _knew_ he wasn’t wrong – he would have scared the crap out of some poor kid who just happened to show a passing resemblance to someone he never technically knew.

He curses his teenaged legs, although logically he knows that he’s almost as fit as his current…other…self and he really should start cutting his body some slack. After all, it’s not his body’s fault that it’s forty-something years behind his mind and not quite at peak physical performance just yet.

She disappears around the corner and he pushes himself harder, willing her to still be there when he gets there. Just a few more feet and he’s there and she’s his and he can find out just what the hell is going on.

He reaches the edge of the building and turns and she’s gone.

He continues running, knowing there’s no way a human being can disappear when there’s an eight-foot wall on one side and a brick building on the other and nothing in between but somehow, _somehow_ , she has. He slows to a stop, squinting against the pain. He flings himself around, looking back down the small sliver of land that separated the wall and the building and letting out a frustrated cry. His hands go to his head, and he holds the palms of his hands against his forehead, willing his mind to just let it all go. _Let go_.

A movement catches his eye. His head darts up and watches as a tall blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman – girl, and about his age – steps out of the shadow of a small doorway he’d somehow missed.

He stares for a moment, before deliberately blinking once, then twice.

She’s still there each time he opens his eyes.

He slowly steps towards her, his eyes never leaving hers. She says nothing, does nothing, other than return his gaze evenly, the fear of the earlier glances gone and replaced with something he can’t define.

He stops with just a couple of feet between them. He feels wild, his breaths coming in pants and not just from the mad sprint he’d just done. A million words run through his mind but he’s too slow to grab any of them and form a coherent sentence or phrase or anything that would classify as communication on a human level.

She is, of course, fine.

‘Hello, Jack,’ she says quietly.

It’s not the same voice, he decides. It’s a different voice.

Her face is different; the skin is more tanned, her teeth aren’t quite as straight. The hair is blonde and a little past her shoulders – his Carter hated long hair.

 _It’s not her. It’s not Carter_ , he tells himself dumbly _. It’s not her._

He wonders crazily for a second if Thor didn’t quite repair everything.

‘Carter,’ he stumbles out, his heart betraying his head. She gives him a small nod, her eyes never leaving his.

His mind races to the inevitable conclusion.

‘Not here,’ she says quietly, as if reading his thoughts. His mind does crazy jumps at that idea. ‘I’ll meet you at your apartment in thirty minutes.’

He stares, the noise of her voice going straight past him. ‘Thirty minutes,’ he repeats blankly. She nods again, her eyes narrowing for a split second and the familiar action sends his heart to new levels of panic. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows she’s right; they can’t do this here, in such a public place.

‘Go, Jack,’ she commands softly. ‘I’ll be there. I will explain everything then. Go.’

He nods, his eyes still searching hers for confirmation of his…hope? He kicked himself. There was no way this was what he _hoped_. There is no way any of them would break so many laws, let alone convince Thor--

He forces himself to stop and presses his lips together.

‘Thirty minutes,’ he repeats, before ripping his eyes from hers and walking dumbly away.

 

 

He paces around his small apartment. He needs to move, to _think_.

His Carter.

It’s not possible, he tells himself. She would never… He knows her; she wouldn’t be able to live with herself breaking _that many_ rules.

He _knew_ her.

And Thor… it had to be Thor. There wasn’t any other way…

That he _knew_ of.

He threw his hands up into the air and let out a growl of frustration. He was just getting used to it all. Just getting to the stage where he could forget for long periods of time. Just getting to the stage where he could control the box.

Compartmentalising things had never been his strongest skill. He’d just got to the point where he was beginning to push it all back in, all back down to where it belonged.

It wasn’t a memory; it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be anything.

They couldn’t be anything. They _weren’t_ anything.

And yet, here she was.

 

 

He's grown. He's an inch taller than her and about as heavy.

That hadn’t been the first thing she’d noticed about him.

The way his eyes had burned into hers…the emotion on his face that she still couldn’t define and had never been able to. It haunted her in the same way a much older face, tinged with a shimmering blue, had haunted her for so long.

She wasn’t sure watching him for so long was fair. But she couldn’t…she couldn’t just insert herself into his life.

What if she’d been wrong? What if he was happy?

Happy without them. Without her.

It hadn’t taken too many hidden cameras and carefully-placed microphones to reveal just _happy_ he was.

 

 

He lets out a long breath before pushing himself to his feet and walking over towards the door.

 _Breathe_.

He grabs the door handle and yanks the door open before his nerve fails him and he does something stupid like have a nervous breakdown in his hallway.

She’s standing there with her hands by her sides and a look of thinly-veiled terror on her face. He just stares back.

‘Can I come in?’ she asks eventually, and he automatically takes a step backward and out of her way, his eyes never leaving her. Her hair in a loose ponytail and mostly straight. She’s wearing a knit and tight pale jeans. She’s almost as tall but thinner – less curvy – than he remembers; she’s definitely his age. Maybe younger.

She takes a few steps down the hallway and into the living room where she turns to face him. He’s trailed behind her, trying desperately to regulate his breathing.

 _Breathe_.

‘I’ve seen you,’ he blurts out. She grimaces slightly before nodding.

‘I’ve been watching you. I wanted…well, I wanted to see you for myself first,’ she explains and his heart’s still racing because she’s all awkwardness and lip-biting and _exactly_ how he remembers her.

‘She said you weren’t happy,’ she reveals, her face full of achingly-familiar concern. He drops her gaze and looks at the floor.

‘Would you be?’ he asks quietly. She closes her eyes for a moment at the bitterness in his voice.

‘No,’ she agrees. He hears her take a deep breath and looks back up at her. ‘Not if I was alone,’ she adds firmly, the slight waver in her voice betraying her. He holds her gaze, her blue eyes wide and afraid.

It’s a risk, but it’s one he’s willing to take. This wild ride is only going to end one of two ways and he has nothing left to lose.

‘Well, then,’ he finally mutters. ‘I guess I’m going to be happy now.’

The look on her face – nervousness-tempered joy – hits him straight in the gut and the urge to kiss her almost overwhelms him. She sucks in a deep breath and bites her lip and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that _exactly_ the same thought is going through her mind.

He has a split-second to decide.

He drops her gaze. _Not like this_ , he thinks.

 

 

He can’t stop watching her. He watches as she sips her juice – thank goodness for weird teenage cravings because all he’d had otherwise was milk – and fiddles with the edge of her knit while she surveys his apartment.

The eyes – it’s the eyes. The face is only vaguely familiar – knocking off half your age and then some would do that – but the eyes haven’t changed. He feels like the cliché – the sappy romance novel come to life – _those_ _eyes_ – but he knows it’s true. He is the cliché.

‘How long?’ he asks. She flips her head back to face him.

‘Almost two weeks,’ she states, looking at her watch, and he nods. He’d known they were watching him – the curse of memory was also a twisted blessing.

He guesses they’re watching her too, which meant…

‘Does he know?’ He has to know just how much his counterpart knows. Whether he took pity on him. Whether he could bring himself to give him a chance what he himself couldn’t have.

Her eyes flashed to his briefly before dropping his gaze and swallowing. She pulls at the edge of her knit before shrugging slightly. ‘He will do. Eventually. She’s…working out the right time to tell him,’ she adds carefully, and he grins. She grins wryly back at him before dropping her eyes and his heart swells just a little more.

She schools her features, examining her feet for a few moments while he watches her. He knows her - she’s working up the courage to say something, trying to figure out how to word a request or a suggestion. He’s seen it a million times before and he watches because he’s going to just enjoy it for a few moments.

She goes to speak before letting out an amused huff. He frowns quizzically at her.

‘Sorry. It’s just…well, I’ve spent the last two weeks telling myself you’re Jonathan O’Neill. Jonathan. Jon. And yet…’ She trailed off, waving a hand in the air.

‘Sir,’ he finishes, looking down at his own empty glass.

‘Yeah,’ she admits guiltily.

‘Well, I’m definitely not that now,’ he mutters, unable to keep the hint of bitterness out of his voice. He sighs at the cringe he knows would be gracing her face at his comment.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly, putting her glass down on the counter in front of her.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ he replies quickly before looking up at her. ‘I called you Carter,’ he reminds her, and she purses her lips slightly. ‘Looks like we both have some habits to break.’

She nods, and he watches as her hand moves to brush a stray hair behind her ear. It suddenly hits him that she’s uncomfortable in this new body of hers, the same way he’d spent weeks tripping over his own feet and cursing his new-found lack of upper-body strength.

It only serves as a catalyst for his eyes to travel over her body again. Her legs are long and her hips slim and he knows she would have been a heart-breaker in high-school the _first_ time. The sudden surge of adrenaline that floods his system shouldn’t have caught him by surprise, but he’d spent thirty years _not_ being a teenager and he feels his body tense for action.

 ‘So, we’d better get going,’ he announces before he can stop himself. He pushes himself off his chair and forces his gaze to her face, before dropping it again, giving himself a short but stern talking to and lifting his head to meet her gaze again.

Her brow is furrowed in confusion. ‘Where?’

‘To get your stuff,’ he says casually as if he hasn’t just laid his entire heart out on the floor for her to stomp on if she very well chose to. He holds his breath through her moment of indecision before almost physically sagging with relief when she gives him a shy smile and heads for the door.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
